SynaptiCAD offers HDL Works Tools

SynaptiCAD is now the US and Canadian
distributor for HDL Works EDA tools: Ease, HDL Companion,
and IO Checker. These tools provide alternative graphical
approaches for VHDL and Verilog code design which also
complement SynaptiCAD's timing diagram editors and
graphical simulation tools. EASE provides a state machine
bubble editor, truth table designer, and block diagram
design environment for generating VHDL and Verilog code.
HDL Companion scans design directories and creates a
complete hierarchal view of any VHDL or Verilog design and
supporting files that helps engineers explore unfamiliar
designs. It also includes linting and HTML document
generation. IO Checker verifies hundreds of pins between
an FPGA and the PCB design using a rules-based approach
via regular expressions.

Synergistic Products

"We've been searching for a good partner
to distribute our tools in the United States and Canadian
markets, and SynaptiCAD's experience with VHDL and Verilog
productivity tools was just what we were looking for,"
said Willem Gruter, CEO of HDL Works. "We are very excited
that SynaptiCAD has agreed to distribute the HDL Works
product line."

Dan Notestein, president of SynaptiCAD,
responded that "We've been aggressively looking to expand
our portfolio of HDL design and verification tools to
complement our existing products. SynaptiCAD has
established a reputation for bringing to market high
quality products and a level of service and support that's
often absent nowadays in EDA and we plan to leverage that
base further by working with other like-minded EDA
companies. The HDL Works tools fill the gap we had in our
line for graphically generating synthesizable HDL code."

EASE Block and State Diagram HDL Entry

EASE offers the best of both worlds with
your choice of graphical or text-based HDL entry. You
don't need to be a master of either Verilog or VHDL. When
you're creating a new design, just enter your design using
your preferred mix of graphics and text. EASE
automatically generates optimized HDL code for you in the
selected language - VHDL or Verilog. EASE supports
industry standard version control environments that deal
with design and configuration management, enabling
multiple users to work simultaneously on one EASE project.

HDL Companion for design exploration

HDL Companion helps you explore any HDL
design, including third party IP, legacy code and other
HDL sources. HDL Companion scans design directories and
uses the information to generate a hierarchal view of the
HDL code and all supporting files. The embedded fuzzy
parsers accept any Verilog, VHDL or mixed HDL design code;
even if the code is incomplete or contains errors.
Syntactically correct HDL can also be linted to find
problems not reported by the compilers. The GUI offers
many ways to navigate through the design and explore the
details you're looking for including a tree browser,
hierarchical chart, signal trace charts, text editors, and
lint results. The GUI can also launch your simulator. HDL
Companion is an excellent tool for navigating through a
design and it is especially useful for investigating
designs that are unfamiliar.

IO Checker verifies hundreds of pins in between FPGA and PCB

When using large FPGAs on a PCB, making
sure that the FPGA pins are connected to the right PCB
signals is a cumbersome task. On the FPGA side, the pins
are assigned to the HDL signals that form the toplevel of
the logic implemented on the FPGA. On the PCB side, the
pins have to be connected to the proper net that will
connect it to other components on the PCB. Because
implementation of FPGA and PCB is often done in parallel,
the signal names used are not always identical. To make
things even worse, it is often necessary to perform pin
swaps to prevent PCB routing problems. These pin swaps have
to be made both on the FPGA and the PCB. As this is almost
always manual work, and current devices have over 1500
pins, a mistake is easily made.

Pricing and Availability

EASE, HDL Companion, and IO Checker are
available on Windows, Solaris, and Linux. The software can
be licensed on either a permanent or leased basis, and
both floating and node-locked versions are available. For
more information, contact SynaptiCAD at phone
(540)953-3390, fax (540)953-3078, email:
sales@syncad.com, web www.syncad.com

Marketing Contact

For any questions concerning this press
release please contact Donna Mitchell at 540-953-3390 or
email at donna@syncad.com. High-resolution images can be
downloaded directly from SynaptiCAD's web site at
www.syncad.com.